When Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first introduced the costly socialist power grab known as the Green New Deal — with a matching resolution in the Senate by Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey — it was widely criticized and mocked as absurd and unconstitutional by the right.

Even some on the left expressed misgivings about the proposal to fundamentally transform the entirety of the United States’ energy sector, economy and much of society in general, ostensibly to combat climate change but in reality to centralize more power and control with the federal government.

Now the Democrats who support the measure put forward by Ocasio-Cortez are facing an incredible predicament as a major force for fundraising and voter support on the left — organized labor unions, especially the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO — have come out firmly against the Green New Deal.

That will force some Democrats to choose between placating their typically moderate liberal union worker voters or appeasing the increasingly rabid and radical far-left base of the party that demands significant action on environmental concerns.

Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso tweeted out a copy of a letter sent from leaders of the AFL-CIO labor union conglomerate to Markey and Ocasio-Cortez,. It expressed how the labor unions simply couldn’t support the Green New Deal proposal that would “cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families,”a message with which the Republican senator agreed.

The letter, dated March 8, began by noting that union workers weren’t consulted on the ideas put forward in the proposal, even as those workers stood most at risk of facing severe economic disruptions and potential job loss because of the proposed policies. The unions agreed that some action was required to address the eventual impact of man-made climate change, and even expressed support for investment in new technologies to produce clean and carbon-free energy. However, they seemed to balk at some of the proposals — such aiming to do away with the current national dependence on fossil fuels like oil and natural gas within 10 years — as being non-specific and threatening toward the survival of their jobs and various sectors of the industrial economy.

The AFL-CIO letter stated that the Green New Deal is “not rooted in an engineering-based approach and makes promises that are not achievable or realistic.”

“We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families,” the letter proclaimed. “We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered.”

The letter closed by reiterating that something needed to be done, but suggested that discussions be held about “responsible” solutions that would not utterly destroy the energy and industrial sectors of the economy and the livelihoods of those who work in those and related areas.

The letter was signed by Cecil Roberts, international president of the United Mine Workers of America, and Lonnie Stephenson, international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, as well as eight other major labor unions under the AFL-CIO banner.

The Washington Post reported that the criticisms in the letter seemed to echo comments made to the media just days prior by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka while he was on Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers.

Trumka said, “Look, we need to address the environment. We need to do it quickly. But we need to do it in a way that doesn’t put these communities behind, and leave segments of the economy behind.

“So we’ll be working to make sure that we do two things: that by fixing one thing we don’t create a problem somewhere else,” he added.

Labor unions have long been relied upon by the Democratic Party for considerable support in elections, but that support has been wavering in recent years, given the increasingly leftward lurch of the party’s base and elected officials who stand fundamentally at odds with the more moderate and conservative-leaning rank-and-file workers who make up private-sector unions.

President Donald Trump siphoned off quite a few of those typically Democrat-voting union workers in the 2016 election.

If Democrats continue to press forward with their proposal to wreck the economy and energy/industrial sectors as we currently know them, that problematic trend for Democrats will likely continue and grow devastatingly larger in the 2020 election.

Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments. He has covered current events and politics for Conservative Tribune since 2014.

“I was one of the founders of – sort of – the first Green New Deal back in 2003, 2007,”Shellenberger, the founder of Environmental Progress, began. “People don’t remember President Obama – we spent about $150 billion on renewables between 2009 and 2015, and we just kept encountering the same kind of problems.”

Shellenberger laid out the two main problems that plague wind turbines and solar panels: unreliability and low energy density.

“They just depend on when the sun is shining and when the wind is blowing, which is 10 to 40 percent of the year,”he said, demonstrating how the intermittent energy production of wind and solar makes them unreliable sources of power. “Something people are not as aware of, the low energy density of sunlight and wind. Basically what we’ve been finding is that the lower the energy density of the fuel … the bigger the environmental impact.”

Because solar and wind produce such small amounts of energy, according to Shellenberger, they require a much larger amount of land to generate electricity.

Instead, the Environmental Progress founder touted the benefits of nuclear energy — a source of power that can generate large amounts of reliable energy while emitting zero carbon emissions. However, Shellenberger said the public has yet to fully embrace nuclear energy because they associate it with nuclear bombs, past nuclear accidents and a desire to use energy that harmonizes with the natural world.

“That turns out to be a bad idea because the more natural resources we use, the worse it is for the natural environment,” he said.

As environmental activists become more alarmed about the threat of climate change, many are reevaluating how they perceive nuclear. The U.S. nuclear industry currently supplies about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity, but it provides roughly 60 percent of its zero-carbon electricity. A growing number of climate change-oriented lawmakers are now passing subsidies and support programs to keep nuclear plants in operation.

Shellenberger went on to say it was “very disappointing”that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s widely publicized Green New Deal does not include provisions for nuclear energy. Ocasio-Cortez’s original FAQ document on the Green New Deal, in fact, called for a phase out of nuclear power. However, following the botched roll out of the Green New Deal, her team took the anti-nuclear language off their website.

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Authored by Michael Bastasch / 11/25/2016

The MV Akademik Shokalskiy is pictured stranded in ice in Antarctica, December 29, 2013. An Antarctic blizzard has halted an Australian icebreaker’s bid to reach a Russian ship trapped for a week with 74 people onboard, rescuers said on Monday. The Aurora Australis had to return to open waters about 18 nautical miles from the stranded Akademik Shokalskiy because of poor visibility, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which is co-ordinating the rescue, told Reuters. Picture taken December 29, 2013. REUTERS/Andrew Peacock ∧

Scientists were shocked by what they found while pouring over accounts by famous South Pole explorers from about a century ago — findings that could change the way experts think about Antarctica and global warming. Researchers found that Antarctic sea ice extent has barely changed since Ernest Shackleton’s botched expedition to map out the South Pole in 1917. Antarctic sea ice conditions in Shackleton’s day mirrored those of today, according to a new study using logs compiled by Shackleton, in addition to data from other noteworthy Antarctic forays during the early 20th Century.

Lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Day and his team were the first to calculate Antarctic sea ice conditions prior to the 1930s. Day estimates sea ice extent ranged from 3.3 and 4.3 million square miles and continued to grow into the 1950s.

Scientists have only really looked at Antarctic sea ice levels from the 1950s onward, which shows a relative decline in sea ice. But Day’s study shows current Antarctic sea ice “is just 14 per cent smaller than at the highest point of the 1900s and 12 per cent bigger than than the lowest point.”

Why is that significant? It means Antarctic sea ice has fluctuated throughout the 20th Century due to natural climatic shifts, and not man-made warming.

“We know that sea ice in the Antarctic has increased slightly over the past 30 years, since satellite observations began,” Day said, according to The Telegraph. “Scientists have been grappling to understand this trend in the context of global warming, but these new findings suggest it may not be anything new.”

“If ice levels were as low a century ago as estimated in this research, then a similar increase may have occurred between then and the middle of the century, when previous studies suggest ice levels were far higher,” he added.

The Pine Island Glacier began melting about 30 years before the modern warming trend of global average temperature that began in the late 1970s.

“A significant implication of our findings is that once an ice sheet retreat is set in motion it can continue for decades, even if what started gets no worse,”NASA’s Bob Bindschadler, a co-author of the report, said in a statement.

Authored by Michael Bastasch 08/09/2016

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory image in extreme ultraviolet light shows an active region of the sun’s coronal loops taken over about a two-day period, from February 8 – 10, 2014 and released on February 18, 2014. Coronal loops are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks, but most change quite rapidly. REUTERS/Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA/Handout via Reuters ∧

Professor Valentina Zharkova at Northumbria University is being attacked by climate change proponents for publishing research suggesting there could be a 35-year period of low solar activity that could usher in an “ice age.”

Zharkova and her team of researchers released a study on sunspot modeling, finding that solar activity could fall to levels not seen since the so-called “Little Ice Age” of the 1600s. Zharkova’s conclusions may have huge implications for global temperature modeling, but her analysis is not accepted by some climate scientists.

“Some of them were welcoming and discussing. But some of them were quite — I would say — pushy,”she told The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) in an interview on her solar study.

In fact, Zharkova said some scientists even tried to have her research suppressed.

“They were trying to actually silence us,”she said. “Some of them contacted the Royal Astronomical Society, demanding, behind our back, that they withdraw our press release.”

Zharkova found that solar activity is driven by two magnetic waves from within the sun that can either dampen or amplify solar activity. Solar activity is believed to play a role in warming and cooling average global temperature. Zharkova’s team incorporated solar data into predictive models and found that the sun is heading into a period of low solar activity similar to the Maunder Minimum of the late 1600s. During this time, scientists believe low solar activity contributed to cooler average global temperature.

“Whatever we do to the planet, if everything is done only by the sun, then the temperature should drop similar like it was in the Maunder Minimum,”she said. “At least in the Northern hemisphere, where this temperature is well protocoled and written. We didn’t have many measurements in the Southern hemisphere, we don’t know what will happen with that, but in the Northern hemisphere, we know it’s very well protocoled.”

“The rivers are frozen,”she added. “There are winters and no summers, and so on.”

The so-called “Little Ice Age”is a controversial topic among scientists. Some argue low solar activity contributed to cooler temperatures over Europe and North America, but others argue volcanic activity drove temperatures lower since the trend began before solar activity fell. Climate scientists were quick to ask the U.K.’s Royal Astronomical Society to suppress Zharkova’s findings.

“The Royal Astronomical Society replied to them and CCed to us and said, ‘Look, this is the work by the scientists who we support, please discuss this with them,’” Zharkova told the GWPF.

“We had about 8 or 10 exchanges by email, when I tried to prove my point, and I’m saying, I’m willing to look at what you do, I’m willing to see how our results we produced and what the sun has explained to us,”she said. “So how this is transformed into climate we do not produce; we can only assume it should be. So we’re happy to work with you, and add to your data our results.

“So don’t take the sunspots which you get, we can give you our curve. Work with our curve. So they didn’t want to,”she said.

Zharkova isn’t the first to suggest a period of low solar activity is on the way that could cause a cooling trend. Solar activity was reportedly at a 200-year low in February.

A July 2015 study by Jorge Sanchez-Sesma at the Mexican Institute of Water Technology found the oscillations in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth could have a much bigger cooling impact on the climate than previous estimates by climate scientists.

Sanchez-Sesma examined solar cycle data going back 100,000 years and compared them to about 25,000 years of surface air temperature data in the Congo River Basin and found that “information from reconstructions and models indicates a potential continental tropical temperature cooling of around 0.5oC for the rest of the 21st century.”

Shrinivas Aundhkar, director of India’s Mahatma Gandhi Mission at the Centre for Astronomy and Space Technology, said in 2015 that declining solar activity could mean a “mini ice age-like situation”is on the way.

In 2013, Professor Cliff Olliert the University of Western Australia posited low solar activity could bring cool the planet.

“There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate,” Ollier wrote. “Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction.”

“Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions but what politicians get are projections based on computer models,”he wrote.

Russian scientists argued in 2012 the world could expect the start of the another Little Ice Age starting in 2014.

“After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055,”wrote Habibullo Abdussamatov of the Russian Academy of Science.

Remember the Keystone XL Pipeline project? Remember what a cause célèbre it was for both the left and right? What the heck ever happened to it? Have you wondered that?

Well, in short it was killed pretty much for good, or at least the foreseeable future – both here in the USSA and now in Canada. As you are no doubt aware, it was Obama who, with the left in the federal and various state legislatures – and with some help from Choo-choo Warren Buffet who owns most of the rail cars now hauling crude down south, vetoed the pipeline. And don’t forget all the gobs of leftist activist money thrown at killing the project.

You may also recall that Canada threatened to build their own pipeline to their west coast and ship the oil to Asia if the U.S. did not acquiesce. That was when the “conservatives” ran Canada. But with the election of lefty socialist (like there’s another kind) Justin Trudeau in Canada, the entire XL project, above and below the border, was pronounced dead.

And that was the end of any talk of long distance oil pipelines. Or is it?

There is another long distance oil pipeline which will span 1,172 miles – from North Dakota’s famous Bakken and Three Forks oil production zones all the way to Pakota, Illinois. The 30 inch pipeline will be capable of transporting an average of 450,000 barrels of crude per day, but have a capacity of 570,000 barrels – possibly more. With this pipeline, the oil will be available to the Midwest, East Coast and Gulf Coast.

This is way it is supposed work – domestically produced crude, shipped throughout the United States for domestic consumption. No foreign entanglements whatsoever – not even friendly.

I know – you’re waiting for a shoe to drop – right? Well, so far there have been no shoes. On July 27, just two ago the Indian Country Media Network reported that “Despite the strong opposition of several tribes, the Army Corps of Engineers has approved nearly all permits to build the Dakota Access Pipeline project. Construction has already begun in all four states along its path.”

May I digress for just a moment? Why is it that we whiteys must call American Indians “Indigenous Peoples,” but their own media outlet can be the “Indian Country network?” I guess it’s the same reason blacks can call each other the “n” word, but we would be jailed for it. Oh well.

This time, the Injuns seem to be the only ones making a fuss (not quite) – claiming that a pipeline break could contaminate entire water supplies, destroy land and create public health hazards for reservations – but a train derailment, which are a lot more common, would never.

The only other organization to raise hell over it is of course Think Progress – the ultra-ultra left advocacy organization. If it has anything to do with actual progress, you can bet they will be firmly against it.

Their big beef, other than a pipeline which transports dirty oil and not rainbows and Unicorn farts, is that the feds are virtually shut out of the process. Other than the Army Corps of Engineers permitting process, the pipeline runs almost entirely through State and private land, so there is not much Obama can do – which is probably why we haven’t heard much about it.

Also there is the presidential election, coupled with almost daily terrorist updates worldwide – and the Olympics. These “hot” topics are sucking virtually all the oxygen out of other news.

Then there is the investment being made – all the equipment, pipes, machinery, etc. All cost loads of money, which means an uptick in those manufacturing sectors – none of which the left can tout because of the source. And of course there are all the jobs, which again cannot be discussed by the left.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.7 billion investment and will create (actually has already begun) anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 jobs for area residents – maybe more. All trades are needed – from welders to mechanics, electricians, pipefitters, heavy equipment operators and others within the heavy construction industry. Then is the boon to the hospitality industries such as hotels, motels, restaurants, etc. along the route – none of which the press will report on.

Finally there is the increased tax revenue for the four states involved – North and South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. The pipeline will generate an estimated $50 million annually in property taxes and nearly $74 million in sales taxes to these states.

So hooray for real progress and the relatively quiet production of a much needed domestic pipeline. It’s about time I get a chance to report some good news.

Written by Andrew Follett, Energy and Environmental Reporter, 06/20/2016

Blue states have 42 percent more mass shootings than red states after adjusting for population, according to data published by Vox, a progressive media outlet, and examined by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Vox published its data after the Orlando terror attack last Sunday, and it suggests that blue states, which tend to have extremely strict gun laws, are ironically much more likely to have mass shootings than red states with less strict gun laws.

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TheDCNF’s analysis found that 543 of the mass shootings listed by Vox occurred in blue states while only 330 occurred in red states. If adjusted to account for differences in the size of population, blue states have .381 mass shootings per 100,000 people, while red states have a mere .267.Places where Democrats controlled the state legislature were even more likely to have mass shootings than the average blue state. This means that a mass shooting, as defined by Vox, is 42 percent more likely to occur in a blue state after accounting for population differences.

The deep blue areas of Washington, D.C. and Maryland led the nation with 2.38 and .998 mass shootings per 100,000 people. Illinois, Delaware, Michigan Rhode Island, and California were relatively close behind and had more mass shootings than the blue state average, according to Vox’s data.

The typical liberal explanation for this is that mass shooters go to red states to buy guns, which they use in blue states. Even progressive Politifact finds these claims“misleading for a varied number of reasons.” This also ignores the fact that there are already roughly 360 million firearms in America, or more guns than people.

Republicans currently control the state legislature and the governor’s office of Michigan, but the state has consistently voted for Democrats in the last six presidential elections. During the last six years, the GOP has won governorships in purple and even deep blue states: Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico.

Of the top ten states by mass shootings per capita, TheDCNF’s analysis found that six of them were deep blue states. Several red states such as Idaho, North Dakota, and Wyoming did not have a single mass shooting.

TheDCNF concluded that a state was blue or red based on how it voted in each of the last four presidential elections. This methodology only factored in America’s 22 red states and 18 blue states. This means that if everything else was even, statistically, red states should be over-represented as there are more of them. This methodology excluded large swings states like Ohio and Florida and states, which leaned red or blue.

TheDCNF previously found that of the 998 “mass shootings” noted by Vox only 86, or roughly eight percent, meet the threshold of a “mass murder,” as defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and academics. Vox’s data claimed America had 11.6 times more mass shootings than actually occurred. This lack of “mass murder” didn’t stop Vox founder Ezra Klein from tweeting out an updated map of 998 “mass shootings,” which was retweeted almost 25,000 times and favorited more than 22,000 times.

Vox’s definition of a “mass shooting” isn’t an official one taken from law enforcement or academia, but appears to be originally created by anti-gun activistsfrom the website Reddit. Vox defined a mass shooting as any shooting where four or more people are injured or killed, not counting the shooter. Criminologists and law enforcement, however define it as four or more people killed, not counting the shooter.

Daily Caller interns Dan Chaison, Josh Hamburger, Ford Springer and Jacqueline Thomas contributed to the analysis of Vox’s data that went into this report.

Reported by Michael Bastasch; 02/09/2016

The U.S. Supreme Court just delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama’s global warming agenda by halting the implementation of a key Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation on carbon dioxide emissions. The court won’t allow the EPA to implement its so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030. This is a big win for the 29 states suing the federal government to stop a rule expected to cripple the coal industry.

“Five justices of the Supreme Court agreed with North Dakota and other parties that EPA’s regulation would impose massive irreparable harms on North Dakota and the rest of the country and that there was a substantial likelihood EPA was acting unlawfully,”Paul Seby, an attorney with law firm Greenberg Traurig representing the state of North Dakota, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

States asked the Supreme Court to halt implementation of the CPP after a lower court rejected their appeal in January. Now, Morrisey and the Obama administration will make their oral arguments on the merits of the law in front of federal judges in June.

“Make no mistake – this is a great victory for West Virginia,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who’s leading the states against the EPA, in a statement on the announcement.

Morrisey argues the CPP amounts to “double regulating” by the EPA, since coal-fired power plants — the main target of the rule — are already being regulated under another provision of the Clean Air Act. States also argue the CPP is in effect a federal takeover of their energy policies.

“We are thrilled that the Supreme Court realized the rule’s immediate impact and froze its implementation, protecting workers and saving countless dollars as our fight against its legality continues,”Morrisey said.

This is the second major EPA regulation to be held up by the courts in recent months. Last year, federal judges issued a stay on an agency rule redefining “waters of the United States”— this sparked backlash from nearly every industry from farmers to energy producers.

But defeating the CPP in court may not be as easy as states think, since the Obama administration will likely argue striking down these rules would go against international commitments made by the U.S. in Paris last year. In December, the U.S. joined nearly 200 countries in pledging to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming. Obama promised to cut emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025.

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